Ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. This web site is my attempt to document, from my perspective, these "interesting times".

Friday, April 22, 2005

Christians are not a special interest group!

Sen.
Mark Pryor of Arkansas gets right to point in explaining precisely what is
wrong with the behavior of some Christian leaders who have joined in the
attack on Democratic filibusters of Bush's judicial nominees:

Their tactics threaten "to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group," Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters. "It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians," added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years.

Here we see the reason why, at the foundation of our nation, so many
Christians supported the strong constitutional provisions separating church and
state from each other(*). When leaders of faith get involved in politics it inevitably
leads to the politicization of faith. People go to church to deal with the most
personal, trying issues in their lives. The religious leaders who are so gung-ho
to politicize their faith are betraying their congregations by intermingling
their politics with the congregations personal lives.

It is true that many mistakenly thought that America could live without God.
They forgot about the strong tradition of faith in this country. The faith
backlash was inevitable. But those who wish to politicize faith are making the
similar mistake of forgetting that there is an equally strong tradition of
secularism in this country. The secular backlash will only grow the more these
modern day zealots scream.

(* One of the ironies of the current fight is that the strongest support for
said separation came from southern Christians while the strongest
opposition came from northeastern Christians, most particularly from Massachusetts!)